February 5, 2020
Page 2
The
Week in Review
Racist Taunts in Max Attack
Jeremy Christian’s double murder and assault trial
entered a second week of testimony Monday. Police
video showed Christian spewing a racist tirade after
being apprehended in 2017 for killing two men and
wounding a third in stabbings onboard a Max train.
Last week, video was also presented to the jury
to show Christian making racist taunts before and
during the deadly confrontation.
Certain Acquittal in Senate
August Diehl in the film ‘A Hidden Life.’
photo by
r einer b ajo / courtesy 20 th c entury F ox
Far Better Films than the Oscar Nominated
O piniOnated
J udge
by
d arleen
o rtega
This year’s Oscar nominations are
more white, more male, less original
and less deserving even than usual, with
the nihilistic “Joker” and Quentin Tar-
entino’s bit of Hollywood narcissism
topping the list of nominees. Still, al-
though Hollywood doesn’t celebrate
them and often has nothing to do with
getting them made or securing them
an audience, far better films than those
you’ll see featured on Oscar night ap-
pear on my list of the year’s best films.
Each of these films goes deep, opens
liminal space and expands your seeing.
Here are the eleven 2019 films I most
heartily recommend:
1. A Hidden Life
6. Peterloo
2. Us
7. The Two Popes
3. Seahorse
8. Marriage Story
4. The Nightingale 9. Amateurs
5. Fast Color
10. Afterlife and Vai
1. “A Hidden Life” takes serious-
ly Georg Eliot’s observation that “[t]
he growing good of the world is partly
dependent on unhistoric acts, and that
things are not so ill with you and me as
they might have been, is half owing to
the number who lived faithfully a hid-
den life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
Franz Jägerstätter’s is just such a life; a
young Austrian farmer, loving husband
to wife Fani, and father to three young
daughters, he also refused to swear loy-
alty to Hitler or to fight in the Nazi war
effort. Because of his unheralded and
quite unusual resistance (he was also
the only person in his town to oppose
c ontinued on p age 15
On the eve of his all-but-certain impeachment acquittal
in the Senate, President Trump headed to the Capitol
Tuesday night to deliver his third State of the Union
address. Majority Senate Republicans voted not to
call witnesses last week, and dodged questions about
whether Trump’s actions pressuring the Ukrainian
President to announce an investigation into Trump’s
political rival Joe Biden — were inappropriate.
Dramatic Super Bowl Rally
A dramatic rally in the fourth
quarter gave Kansas City a 31-20
victory in Super Bowl LIV Sun-
day. After San Francisco took a
20-10 lead going into the final
quarter, the Chiefs scored touch-
downs on three straight posses-
sions and held the 49ers scoreless.
Latin Pride for Halftime Show
Jennifer Lopez and Shakira
fused razzle-dazzle dance
and music with an of-the-mo-
ment sense of Latin Amer-
ican pride as the halftime
performers during Sunday’s
Super Bowl in Miami. The
superstar duo made history as the first two Latina
women to co-headline the coveted halftime show gig.